SpongeBob SquarePants will be turning 20 next year, an anniversary that seems to boggle the mind in a day and age where fads come and go and other properties have already been rebooted more than once over that time. But the phenomenon shows no signs of slowing down. As a matter of fact, the franchise will be heading to the big screen for a third time.
Cartoon Brew reports that the new film, The SpongeBob Movie: It’s a Wonderful Sponge, was announced during the View Conference in Turin, Italy by Paramount Animation President Mireille Soria.
The film will be directed by show veteran Tim Hill and will feature all the characters and setting rendered in computer generated imagery.
The plot will pay tribute to It’s A Wonderful Life and will act as an origin story for SpongeBob, probably using the same structure as the Frank Capra film to retell the first meeting of SpongeBob and his friends at summer camp. The film will also feature the characters interacting with the real world, much like they did in 2015″ The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.
Oscar-Winning composer Hans Zimmer will be providing the score for the film and acting as musical supervisor for the soundtrack. This is not the first animated film that he has worked on. He has composed music for Madagascar, The Simpsons Movie, Kung Fu Panda and others.
Even with the cartoon running daily on Nickelodeon, the theatrical releases have still been lucrative for Paramount. The first film, 2004’s The Spongebob SquarePants Movie, grossed $140 million worldwide, and the second, the aforementioned The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, earned more than double that total with $325 million worldwide. There’s no reason to doubt that the third film will do as good if not even better.
The SpongeBob Movie: It’s a Wonderful Sponge is scheduled to open on July 17, 2020.
